Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook Creator, describes how the Facebook API and supporting tools could help marketers with new ways to make sense of a user’s preferences, passions and connections.
For example, Zuckerberg recognized that a user living in San Francisco, works at Well Fargo, likes listening to R.E.M., plays tennis, eats at Chipotle and is friends with a number of people.
Anyone that wants to test the graph can do so, as long as they aren’t blocked from the Facebook firewall. To access the graph you would have to type http://graph.facebook.com/ [Facebook username] into a browser and the graph will show the basic information of that user.
However, if you would to try http://graph.facebook.com/ [Facebook username]/friends, the open graph might inform you that you don’t have permission to access the list of fiends, because Facebook privacy setting apply to the Open Graph.
As a result, in order to access a user’s basic information, you would have to ask the user for permission to do so. In exchange, Facebook will create a temporary permission token for whoever is signed into Facebook on the browser being used to see the samples.
For example, if you did have permission to access your friends information, you would be able to see many of the same fields for all of the user’s friends. But remember everyone’s privacy settings are respected, and items like email addresses won’t be provided without the direct personal permission. Therefore, if you got a hold of this data you would be able to customize your marketing based on the data that was collected from some of your customers by knowing each other and the shared interest.
The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and developer API.
Login with Faces & Facepile: Is the simpler publisher plugins, which enhances Facebook Connect. It makes it easy and compelling to sign in by leveraging Facebook cookies and showing faces of Facebook friends who are already members of the service.
Like Button and Like Box: This plugin adds the liking feature to any content, typically the whole page. Both can be enhanced with semantic markup, described below. However, the most basic intent for these plugins is get users to like the site and post a link to Facebook, which is then permanently stored onto the users profile and point’s back to the original site.
Activity Feed and Live Stream: This plugin shows static and dynamic activity on the site. Activity Feed lists recent likes and comments from the site, while Live Stream shows a real-time view of the activity on the site and is intended for interactive events.
Recommendations: This plugin surfaces personalized recommendations for the user based on what friends and everyone else “LIKES” on the site. It is intended to drive the user to other pages as well on the site.
Website that uses Facebook API:
FashionFitMommies 